Alarm through built-in speaker?

[Hamslay]

Hi all

I hope this isn't a repeat of a common question. I did trawl through a load of posts on the alarm but never found an answer.

By Squeezebox Touch is beside the bed. When I want to use it, I power up the amp and off we go. Terrific. During the night though, the amp is always off. Being an AV receiver, it's not cheap to leave it on 24/7.

I tried the alarm feature this morning and I got silence. If I fire up the amp, there's my alarm. But I don't want to have the amp on. I've looked and looked and can't find a way of the unit's built in speaker/buzzer/whatever for playing an alarm. I don't expect music, a simple bleep will do.

Am I missing something obvious? I do hope it's got some way of working through its own speaker as I only sold the idea to wife on the basis that it's an alarm clock too!

Cheers for any help.

[garym]

Hi all

I hope this isn't a repeat of a common question. I did trawl through a load of posts on the alarm but never found an answer.

By Squeezebox Touch is beside the bed. When I want to use it, I power up the amp and off we go. Terrific. During the night though, the amp is always off. Being an AV receiver, it's not cheap to leave it on 24/7.

I tried the alarm feature this morning and I got silence. If I fire up the amp, there's my alarm. But I don't want to have the amp on. I've looked and looked and can't find a way of the unit's built in speaker/buzzer/whatever for playing an alarm. I don't expect music, a simple bleep will do.

Am I missing something obvious? I do hope it's got some way of working through it's own speaker as I only sold the idea to wife on the basis that it's an alarm clock too!

Cheers for any help.

no, it doesn't use the internal speaker. My AV setup amp and my main stereo listening amp only goes into full power on when receiving a signal from the preamp. Any options for this? A few other options.

1. connect a small self-powered speaker to the TOUCH in the evening. I really like my audioengine A2 speakers for use with my office computer. But any small selfpowered speaker would work for alarm purposes.

2. Add a RADIO or BOOMBOX to the mix. Both of these have built in speakers/amps. The RADIO is smaller and has the color screen, etc. similar to the TOUCH.

edit: if all you need is a beep for alarm, option #3 is a $5 alarm clock.

[Hamslay]

Thanks Gary. That's disappointing. For a device that's often attached to an amplifier you'd think they'd have an option of the alarm working through its own speaker. Maybe one day...

I do have the old alarm clock but I was hoping to not use it - space is at a premium on the bedside table now. When the Squeezebox comes with such a rich feature-list I just hoped to use more than the music streaming side of it. Ho hum.

[garym]

Thanks Gary. That's disappointing. For a device that's often attached to an amplifier you'd think they'd have an option of the alarm working through its own speaker. Maybe one day...

I do have the old alarm clock but I was hoping to not use it - space is at a premium on the bedside table now. When the Squeezebox comes with such a rich feature-list I just hoped to use more than the music streaming side of it. Ho hum.

Well look at the bright side. I know few people that get a squeezebox and don't have them multiply very soon! You need the small RADIO for your bedside and then use the TOUCH with your main stereo. Heck I started with a single Boom for a bedside radio for internet radio and now have my house entirely setup with lots of SB players of different flavors (I own at least one of every kind since SB3).

p.s. If the alarm is because you absolutely must get up (job!) then it is actually dangerous to use a networked music player as the only alarm source. Too many things can go wrong. Internet down, the stream you are accessing down, backup alarm doesn't fire when stream is down, etc. This said, my BOOM is rock solid with alarms (playing music in the AM), but the one or two times a year that I MUST get up at a certain time (catch a 5:30am flight), I use the Boom, my iPhone alarm, and a regular alarm!

[Hamslay]

Yeah I already have an SB3 in the lounge through my main hi-fi and another SB3 in the kitchen through powered speakers and sub, so this is just the latest addition to the family! I'm not really too peeved, it's just that the alarm clock was another nice feature. It would be good if Logitech add the "alarm through the built-in speaker" option in the future - I can't be alone in not being able to use it because my amp doesn't power on automatically.

[JohnSwenson]

Technically this is not hard to do, it just hasn't been done yet. All you need is a wav file with the sound you want to play (it can't be too big) and a fairly small change to the alarm code, which makes it play the wav file through the effects channel.

This would be a nice first time project for someone that wants to learn squeezeplay programming. Any volunteers?

There are two "gotchas":
1) the internal speaker is not very loud, it was designed for UI beeps not waking someone out of a deep sleep.

2) this only works for alarms setup on the Touch itself. My understanding is that there are alarms on the Touch (you set them through the touch screen) and server alarms set from the web UI. The above mentioned easy implementation is only going to work for the internal Touch alarms. This situation may have changed, there has been a LOT of work going on in regards to syncing alarms so MAYBE a server alarm could triger an alarm on the Touch, but I'm not sure.

John S.